CHAPTER 10 - THE SPLASH OF THE “TWO STATES” THEORY

Summary

After several rounds of negotiation between Li Yafei, deputy secretary of A.R.A.T.S. and his S.E.F. counterpart, Jan Jih-horng, Wang Daohan announced in late June 1999 that he would pay a return visit to Taiwan in the coming October. China hoped that there would be no restriction on the topics for discussion. To prepare for Wang's visit, Beijing planned to hold a forum in late August on mainland China–Taiwan ties and would invite senior Taiwanese statesmen responsible for handling contacts with the mainland. The two sides agreed to a visit by Taiwanese legal experts to China in July and a visit by a Chinese agricultural delegation to Taiwan in August. Jan suggested building detention centres in Xiamen for mainland Chinese who were caught illegally entering Taiwan. Li said that China was willing to co-operate, but would not be able to take full responsibility for the problem. China hoped that a hotline would be set up between the two sides after Wang's visit. The hotline would be of a “higher status” than routine communications between A.R.A.T.S. and S.E.F. China's wish list for the Wang-Koo talks also included closer co-operation on economic issues, such as on agriculture, and listing political matters.

Taiwan Makes a Big Splash

To the surprise of many, in an interview with the German radio station Deutche Welle on 9 July 1999, Lee Teng-hui for the first time openly defined the relations between mainland China and Taiwan as “between two countries (guojia), at least a special relation between two countries”. With this definition he dumped Taiwan's previous position of “two equal political entities”, although according to him, this was actually equal to “two countries”. He also noted that there was no need for Taiwan to declare independence again since it (R.O.C.) had been an independent country since 1912.

Taiwan's Foreign Minister Hu Chih-chiang, S.E.F. Chairman Koo Chen-fu, M.A.C. Chairman Su Chi, and other high officials immediately confirmed this as the government position. Koo changed his previous position (i.e. that he had held in his meeting with Wang Daohan in October 1998) and publicly called cross- strait ties country-to-country (guojia) relations.